The helmet was seldom introduced, so that the crest was placed in the same absurd position as that just described. The shield figured above is a fair specimen of that in vogue between 1810 and 1830. From the latter date to within a few years ago, the arms, in the majority of English book-plates, were represented in a more ornate shield. The helmet was reintroduced, and from it fell a slight mantling, somewhat similar to that which appears in our earliest examples. It is hardly necessary to indicate any particular specimens designed in these last-mentioned styles.
Before closing this chapter, I ought, perhaps, to say a word about Scotch and Irish book-plates. It cannot be said that in these there was ever a style distinctively national. The style fashionable in England at a particular time was also fashionable in Scotland and in Ireland; yet there is a perceptible difference in the way in which its details were carried out, especially in Scotland. In Edinburgh there were several book-plate engravers, and their work possesses a characteristic touch;[6] the 'Simple Armorial' style is rendered much more stiffly, and the shield is often round. 'Jacobean' book-plates are very uncommon, but the 'Chippendales' are an odd mixture of that style as we know it in England and the 'Jacobean.' The presence of a helmet and mantling in a 'Chippendale' book-plate engraved in Scotland is not unusual, and the shield is always very soberly placed. I do not know of a 'Library Interior' plate that hails from north of the Tweed; but, if one ever be discovered, depend upon it no Cupids will frolic there. A few Scotch book-plates are, perhaps, emblematic; that is, display emblems of the possessor's art or trade. Dr. John Bosworth's, in which are figured the staff of Æsculapius, a cock, a serpent, and an owl, is an instance of this; but allegory is almost unknown. No mythological figures sit among the floral decorations of Scotch Chippendale book-plates, as they do so frequently in later Chippendale work in England. The only instance that I can call to mind of the introduction of figures at all into the decoration of a Scotch book-plate, is that of 'Birnie of Broomhill' (_circa_ 1715), reproduced opposite, and in this the figures are sombre enough,--two ministers of 'the kirk' kneeling at their desks. Irish book-plates have even less individuality than Scotch, and are chiefly recognisable by the coarseness of their work, and their dark printing.